Essays On Price Dispersion And Policy Analysis
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Essays On Price Dispersion And Policy Analysis
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Author : Viacheslav Sheremirov
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2014
Essays On Price Dispersion And Policy Analysis written by Viacheslav Sheremirov and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014 with categories.
A pivotal question in macroeconomics is how output, employment, and price level react to monetary, fiscal, and productivity shocks, both in business-cycle models and in the data. Sticky prices are often considered as one of the key amplification and propagation mechanisms for such shocks. However, there is still a widespread debate how sticky prices are and why they are sticky. This dissertation sheds a new light on this question. Chapter 1 relies on a relatively understudied measure of price stickiness--cross-sectional dispersion of prices--to distinguish between different models of price rigidity, while Chapter 2 measures price stickiness in online markets. With e-commerce becoming a significantly larger sector of the economy, this is one of the first attempts to understand pricing in online markets from data comparable to those used for brick-and-mortar stores. Since different business-cycle models make conflicting predictions about effects of demand shocks, in Chapter 3 I approach this question empirically by estimating the size of fiscal multipliers from military spending data. Such empirical estimates may help researchers and policymakers to distinguish between various models. In macroeconomic models, the level of price dispersion, which is typically approximated using its relationship with inflation, is a central determinant of welfare, the cost of business cycles, the optimal rate of inflation, and the trade-off between inflation and output stability. While the comovement of price dispersion and inflation implied by standard models is positive, in this dissertation I show that it is actually negative in the data. Chapter 1 shows that sales play a pivotal role: i) if sales are removed from the data, the comovement of price dispersion and inflation turns positive; ii) models in which price dispersion is due to price rigidity cannot quantitatively match the comovement even for regular prices; iii) the Calvo model with sales can quantitatively match both the negative comovement found in the data and the positive comovement for regular prices. Finally, I show that models that fail to match the degree of comovement in the data can significantly mismeasure welfare and its determinants. Chapter 2 focuses on price-setting practices in online markets examined through the lens of a novel dataset on price listings and the number of clicks from the Google Shopping Platform. This unique dataset contains information on price quotes and the number of clicks at the daily frequency for a broad variety of consumer goods and sellers in the US and UK over the period of nearly two years. This chapter provides estimates of the frequency of price adjustment, price synchronization across sellers and goods, as well as the distribution of the sizes of price changes. It compares the estimates for the case when information on quantity margin is observed--as in the scanner data from brick-and-mortar stores--with the case when it is not, which is typical in the literature on online prices. It concludes that many internet prices that do not change often obtain very few clicks. The key findings are the following: First, despite the cost of price change being negligible, prices appear relatively sticky. Second, if the quantity margin is accounted for, prices are much more flexible. It remains a question why low-demand sellers do not adjust their prices often, yet maintain costly price listings on the platform. Third, in spite of low costs of monitoring competitors' prices and high benefits from doing so--since search costs for consumers are low too--there is little price synchronization across sellers. Fourth, the distribution of the sizes of price changes is characterized by a non-trivial mass around zero, which is inconsistent with the state-dependent models with fixed menu costs, but favors time-dependent models of price adjustment. Hence, online prices change infrequently, by a large amount, and are not synchronized across sellers. In Chapter 3, I use a multi-country dataset on disaggregated military spending to document the effect of government expenditure by sector on aggregate output. The data obtained from multiple sources including UN, NATO, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) allow to systematically break down total military expenditure into that on durables versus nondurables and services for 69 countries within 1950-1997 period. I show that the spending multiplier is larger when government spends on durables rather than on nondurables or services, which could be due to differences in price flexibility, intertemporal elasticity of substitution, or some other sectoral factors. Although the estimates suffer from the lack of precision, the finding is robust across data sources and groups of countries. Quantitatively, the durables multiplier could be up to four times as high as that for nondurables and services. I use the dataset to estimate the standard spending multiplier as a litmus test, which results in a conventional fiscal multiplier of the size of about 1 ranging from 0.6 to 1.3 in different samples of countries.
Essays On Consumer Shopping Behavior And Price Dispersion
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Author : Aleksandr Yankelevich
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2011
Essays On Consumer Shopping Behavior And Price Dispersion written by Aleksandr Yankelevich and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2011 with Electronic dissertations categories.
Essay 1: "Price-Matching in a Sequential Search Duopoly" While substantial research has tried to determine if price-matching guarantees are anti-competitive, most previous studies have overlooked the effect that these policies have on consumer search behavior. This essay examines how price-matching guarantees affect consumer behavior and prices in a model of sequential price search. By endogenizing consumers' acquisition of price information, I find that price-matching may raise prices in three new ways. First, price-matching diminishes firms' incentives to lower prices to attract consumers who have no cost of search. Second, for consumers with positive search costs, price-matching lowers the marginal benefit of search, inducing them to accept higher prices. Finally, higher prices may come about because price-matching can lead to asymmetric equilibria where one firm runs fewer sales and both firms tend to offer smaller discounts than in a symmetric equilibrium. These price increasing effects grow in proportion to the number of consumers who make use of price-matching guarantees as well as in the amount of asymmetry that prevails in equilibrium. Essay 2: "Asymmetric Sequential Search" (with Carmen Astorne-Figari) Rival firms often find themselves catering to a very different mix of customers from that of their competitors. This can lead to variations in pricing behavior even when other factors, such as product quality and the cost of production, are held constant across firms. In this essay, we use a model of sequential consumer price search to explore how asymmetries in the demand structures across firms impact firm pricing. In our model, a fraction of consumers must pay a cost to search for prices beyond their local firm and firms serve different fractions of local consumers. The price distribution of a firm with more local consumers first order stochastically dominates that of a firm with fewer local consumers and places positive probability on its upper bound. This means that a firm with more local consumers has a higher average price and runs sales less frequently. The frequency of sales diminishes in the number of local consumers, but price dispersion persists even if all consumers are local to a single firm. Moreover, as the fraction of consumers who search without cost increases, firms tend to offer bigger discounts, while the likelihood of a sale may fall. Essay 3: "Energizer: The Bunny or the Battery? Advertising as a Way to Publicize Either the Brand or the Good" (with Carmen Astorne-Figari) Experimental studies and surveys of consumers suggest that an important role of advertising is to convince consumers that they want the product and to buy it from the brand advertising it. However, because of competitive clutter, an advertisement that induces a consumer to enter the market may lead her to purchase from a competing brand. Thus, we can characterize two effects of advertising: (i) an effect that benefits the individual firm by promoting binding between the brand and the advertised good and (ii) a "public good" quality that benefits all producers of the good by inducing additional consumers to enter the market. We analyze these two effects to study the relationship between advertising and market size, price, firm profit and consumer welfare.
Existence And Persistence Of Price Dispersion
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Author : Saul Lach
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2000
Existence And Persistence Of Price Dispersion written by Saul Lach and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2000 with Pricing categories.
Price Dispersion In Continuous Economies When Stores Are Located Close Together
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Author : Michael Peters
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1981
Price Dispersion In Continuous Economies When Stores Are Located Close Together written by Michael Peters and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1981 with Consumers categories.
Information And Price Dispersion
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Author : Dieter Pennerstorfer
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2015
Information And Price Dispersion written by Dieter Pennerstorfer and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2015 with Gasoline categories.
We examine the relationship between information and price dispersion in the retail gasoline market. We first show that the clearinghouse models in the spirit of Stahl (1989) generate an inverted-U relationship between information and price dispersion. We construct a new measure of information based on precise commuter data from Austria. Regular commuters can freely sample gasoline prices on their commuting route, providing us with spatial variation in the share of informed consumers. We use detailed information on gas station level prices to construct price dispersion measures. Our empirical estimates of the relationship are in line with the theoretical predictions.
Essays On Market Response To Changes In Costs And Price Transparency
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Author : Anna Olga Smolnik
language : en
Publisher: Cuvillier Verlag
Release Date : 2017-01-25
Essays On Market Response To Changes In Costs And Price Transparency written by Anna Olga Smolnik and has been published by Cuvillier Verlag this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-01-25 with Business & Economics categories.
The dissertation consists of three empirical studies and takes a closer look at price fluctuations using German gasoline prices as an example for a homogenous good. It analyzes consumers’ reaction to price fluctuations and respectively the pricing behavior of firms. The first paper, which was developed with co-authorship, explores consumers’ online price search effects on the pricing behavior of firms (gasoline price level and price dispersion). As regulators have recently implemented a mechanism for reporting all price changes to a central data base, the core assumption of this price reporting scheme is that the increase in price transparency will lead to a decline in the price level and a reduction in price dispersion. The second study addresses the question whether German gas stations adjust their retail prices asymmetrically in response to crude oil price changes, i.e., whether gas stations react quicker to crude oil price increases than to crude oil price decreases. The third study aims to analyze whether consumers react more strongly to gasoline price increases or to price decreases when considering buying a new vehicle.
Essays In Transportation Economics And Policy
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Author : Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez
language : en
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Release Date : 2011-01-01
Essays In Transportation Economics And Policy written by Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez and has been published by Brookings Institution Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2011-01-01 with Business & Economics categories.
This comprehensive survey of transportation economic policy pays homage to a classic work, Techniques of Transportation Planning, by renowned transportation scholar John R. Meyer. With contributions from leading economists in the field, it includes added emphasis on policy developments and analysis. The book covers the basic analytic methods used in transportation economics and policy analysis; focuses on the automobile, as both the mainstay of American transportation and the source of some of its most serious difficulties; covers key issues of urban public transportation; and analyzes the impact of regulation and deregulation on the U.S. airline, railroad, and trucking industries. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Alan A. Altshuler, Harvard University; Ronald R. Braeutigam, Northwestern University; Robert E. Gallamore, Union Pacific Railroad; Arnold M. Howitt, Harvard University; Gregory K. Ingram, The Wold Bank; John F. Kain, University of Texas at Dallas; Charles Lave, University of California, Irvine; Lester Lave, Carnegie Mellon University; Robert A. Leone, Boston University; Zhi Liu, The World Bank; Herbert Mohring, University of Minnesota; Steven A. Morrison, Northeastern University; Katherine M. O'Regan, Yale University; Don Pickrell, U.S. Department of Transportation; John M. Quigley, University of California, Berkeley; Ian Savage, Northwestern University; and Kenneth A. Small, University of California Irvine.
Essays On Price Dynamics And Consumer Search
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Author : Matthew Stephen Lewis
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2004
Essays On Price Dynamics And Consumer Search written by Matthew Stephen Lewis and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2004 with categories.
Essays On Business Cycles And Monetary Policy
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Author : Emrehan Aktuğ
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2022
Essays On Business Cycles And Monetary Policy written by Emrehan Aktuğ and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022 with categories.
My dissertation investigates the nonlinear dynamics in business cycles and the transmission of monetary policy using both empirical and theoretical frameworks. Chapter 1 examines the impact of macroeconomic asymmetry on the welfare cost of business cycles. I investigate the welfare cost of business cycles due to asymmetries generated by two occasionally binding constraints (OBCs): downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) and zero lower bound (ZLB). Although business cycle volatility has declined recently as the Great Moderation literature suggests, I find that the welfare cost of business cycles has doubled due to the increased skewness of business cycles over time that is apparent in the data. In a quantitative dynamic equilibrium model that accounts for volatility and skewness changes in pre and postVolcker periods, I estimate that the welfare cost of business cycles has increased from 0.57% (in terms of consumption equivalence) in the pre-Volcker period to 0.97% in the post-Volcker period. Counterfactual analysis shows that while both OBCs play a role, the binding ZLB explains most of the welfare effects in the post-Volcker period. Policy counterfactuals indicate that increasing the inflation target from 2% to 4% reduces the skewness of business cycles and the binding rates of both OBCs, thereby leading to a significant decrease in the welfare cost, from 0.97% to 0.67%. In Chapter 2, I investigate the welfare maximizing steady-state inflation rate in a heterogeneousagent New Keynesian model with Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity (DNWR). After matching the annual wage change distribution in the U.S., I show that DNWR has a very significant impact on the economy when the inflation target is low. Considering the effect of the zero lower bound, price dispersion due to sticky prices, declining natural rate of interest, and lower trend productivity, I find that the optimal inflation target should be much higher than 2%, close to 7%. This result holds taking transition dynamics into account and is robust to a wide range of parameterizations. Lastly, Chapter 3 analyzes the impact of heterogeneity in wage and price stickiness on the transmission of monetary policy. Using the price and wage rigidity estimates of previous studies, I find a slightly negative correlation between wage and price rigidity at the industry level. After categorizing 3-digit industries as rigid and flexible, I analyze the impulse responses of real variables to a monetary policy shock. I document a significant response of industrial production in price-rigid industries, whereas in wage-rigid industries the response is still significant but weaker. Consistent with the theory, the response in price- and wage-flexible industries is not significant. The empirical results suggest that due to relatively lower variation in wage stickiness at the industry level, price stickiness plays a more important role in the differential response of industries to a monetary policy shock. Besides, I develop a multi-sector model incorporating sector-level heterogeneity both in wage and price rigidity into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model and analyze the monetary non-neutrality for different specifications. The results of the model verify the empirical findings
Essays In The Economics Of Electronic Commerce
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Author :
language : en
Publisher: Stanford University
Release Date :
Essays In The Economics Of Electronic Commerce written by and has been published by Stanford University this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on with categories.